Says Laurent Léger, a Charlie Hebdo journalist who survived the attack on the magazine, of his colleagues who were killed to Open contributor SAMANTHA DE BENDERN who finds in today’s France a threat to national symbols

Once a Double Niner, always a Double Niner. So say soldiers of the 99th Field Regiment of the Indian Army, which was awarded the title ‘Sylhet’ for its gallantry in the 1971 War for the liberation of Bangladesh. First raised in Aurangabad as the 99th Mountain Composite Regiment (Towed) on 15 April 1964, it is remembered for its role in obtaining the surrender of Pakistani forces after a 25-day gun battle during the war. As this 20-minute documentary shows, the Double Niners were masters of tactical manoeuvres, a tradition they still try their utmost to uphold.

Unlike Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata, Chennai has no designated red light district, with conspicuously available young and old women waiting at every window. As a result, sex work has had to go underground and get innovative, ‘an instance of which is the rise of the mobile brothel, which wanders around Chennai making house or hotel calls’. Another consequence of sex work’s clandestine and decentralised nature is the rising number of married women taking part without the knowledge of their husbands.

According to a recent paper by social worker and researcher Uma Ravikumar, who conducted 311 interviews with sex workers scattered across 11 neighbourhoods in Chennai, including in Vadapalani, Kodambakkam, KK Nagar, T-Nagar and Porur, about 70 per cent of the city’s estimated 14,000 sex workers are ‘home-based’. “They tell their husbands that they are going for garments work, or some other small-scale work where they are paid on a daily basis,” says Ravikumar, “and whenever their clients call, usually four to six times a month, they meet them.”

Most of them get involved in sex work after being insidiously primed to do so by older sex workers in their neighbourhood. “They’re the ones who bring new sex workers into the field, by spotting women who are suffering from financial or marital problems,” says Ravikumar. “They emotionally bond with them, they provide moral support, and then they say, ‘I’ll take care of you, I’ll get you a very decent client, you can improve your family life, and anyway your husband is a drunkard or having another affair.’ They say, ‘Wherever you go to work, you have exploitation, better to adjust and be [exploited] in a good place.’” Others, born to sex workers, are inadvertent recidivists. “Brokers and agents target children of sex workers,” says Ravikumar. “Sex workers insist that they don’t want their children to enter the profession, but the moment their daughters hit puberty, they send them to a higher class client, since the first encounter fetches a high price, anywhere between Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh. They get them married after, but they have been exposed to the profession, so that’s what they turn to for survival in times of distress if their husbands desert them or don’t earn enough.”

Islamic fundamentalists chopped off his right hand. His college dismissed him. The government abandoned him. His wife ended her own life when she could not take the trauma any longer. And his son was hounded by the police for no reason. Open met TJ Joseph in his hometown in central Kerala. The indefatigable teacher is in the midst of writing his memoir